Something Is missing
by Salomedancing
Summary: There is something in John Smith's life that isn't quite as it should be, but he can't put his finger on what it is.


**AN: This fic also mentions Donna Noble, Martha Jones, Ian Chesterton, Elizabeth Shaw, Peri Brown and Alistair Lethbridge-****Stewart and there are references to character deaths.**

Something's missing.

Actually, a lot are missing for John Smith. One heart, for example. Despite knowing that he, in this particular body, has never had more than one, his memories tell him it should be two. Sometimes, when he isn't thinking, he moves in a way that is only possible with two hearts and things gets a bit awkward. And there are other things, small or significant that makes him having to adjust and think through constantly, but that is fine, really. He has Rose and that makes up for everything, apart from that odd something that nags him at the back of his mind. It is him and Rose and they will never be apart again. He can let go of doubts and rules because he is not a Time Lord but a human and they will have a whole life together. It breaks his heart when he thinks of his Time Lord counterpart because he knows exactly what he had to leave behind when he left Pete's World. All things Rose that John Smith gets to have and he is very happy.

Still, there's something missing.

He gets a job at Torchwood. He isn't quite sure what, exactly, happened to Queen Victoria as she never told anyone, but he is quite certain that there was a Time Lord mucking around back then that caused her to start it. He wonders if it is a version of him or someone else, but he can't tell. He likes this world's Torchwood, anyway. It's more like UNIT, actually and after all confusion and deaths they have dug out General Lethbridge-Stewart from his retirement to run things. He may be old, but he is still sharp and John Smith finds himself warming toward him rapidly. It also gives him the idea that it is the uncertainty about the lives of his former companions that bothers him. Well, their counterparts, that is, but he still checks them out.

Sometimes what he finds saddens him, Ian died in a heart attack when he was just fifty-one. Sometimes his heart breaks; Martha and her whole family is gone, they disappeared when the cybermen descend upon London. Most of them, though, have lived lives that are perfectly in line with what they were doing when he met them. Elizabeth Shaw is a professor at Cambridge and Peri is a botanist, for example. Some have done very well indeed; Donna has three children and runs a very successful web store selling kid's clothes. He had gone a bit overboard and ordered a small crater with clothes for Tony's birthday from her.

"You're lucky he is just two," Rose said. "Otherwise he would hate you for not bringing any toys."

Sarah Jane writes, of course. Highly successful SF novels; The Adventures of John Smith. He hadn't been able to resist going to a book signing. Sarah J. Smith wore her dark hair short and was a little plumper than his Sarah Jane but her smile was the same.

"What name should I sign it to? Sarah asked and he stammered.

"John Smith, actually. Real name, promise. Just a coincidence. But I'm a big fan. A huge fan."

And she laughed and signed the book saying that at least he wasn't sporting an overlong scarf like her hero.

"Not anymore", he said and laughed as well.

Knowledge may be sad or sweet, but not, he knows, what he was looking for. Something is still missing.

A rather ordinary day he sees a man he knows when he turns around a street corner. An impeccably dressed middle-aged man with greying hair and beard. A little older than when John Smith saw him last, which is nearly forty years ago or hundreds, just recently or never, depending on how you see it. And a universe away. If John Smith had ever thought of encountering the Master again he would have thought it would be as Harold Saxon, but this is the Master of several regenerations ago, a little older than he was, but here he has evidently never needed a new body and has aged a little as even Time Lords do eventually, if the don't change. Perhaps it isn't him at all, perhaps it is just an ordinary human who happen to look like his best enemy.

John Smith has to know, so he runs up the man, knowing that he won't be recognized at least. He can still sense a Time Lord, but no one will know that he once was, because he was only ever human. He just remembers being one. He stops right in front of the Master, so abruptly that they almost collide. This counterpart Master has darker eyes than the Master he remembers, but they are still hooded and right now very annoyed. A familiar and almost comforting annoyance, obviously he can irritate the Master as easily as ever just by being around and he grins happily.

"Excuse me. I'm very sorry to impose myself like this, but you do look a lot like an old friend of mine! Well, if I say friend I don't mean friend, really. More like a very dear enemy, I could say, or perhaps not so dear, not always or very often at all and anyway I can see quite clearly that you aren't him, of course. Much older and all that. Who are you, by the way?"

He grabs the Master's gloved hand and presses it enthusiastically and the Master lets him, though the look of annoyance deepens, all signs pointing to him getting a bit thunderous if this keeps up.

"My name is Colonel Masters." he answers coolly. "And you have to excuse me; I am running late for a meeting."

"My name's John Smith. Delighted, I'm sure. But I shan't keep you, of course."

He watches the Master disappear into a nearby building and his grin disappears. This is another world and there is a chance that this Master is a perfectly benevolent Time Lord, but then he might not. John Smith thinks definitely not and takes note on exactly which company the Master has gone to visit and then he leaves to alert Torchwood about a possible new threat.

He is right, of course. The Master has a plan and it is as evil and complicated as any he had ever had. It takes all of John Smith's ingenuity to put a stop to it. It was all very exciting, but it isn't until he is standing in a rain of dust and falling debris, coughing and laughing with Rose in his arms that realisation strikes him. The Master is, temporarily, defeated and has dived into his TARDIS shouting promises of revenge before he disappears. And John Smith, who will always think of himself as the Doctor, whoops in delight and coughs some more and knows that nothing is missing in his life anymore.

END


End file.
